Lyn: Going to hospital – What to do before going to hospital
Listen to patients and health professionals speak about their experience with taking multiple medicines.
Lyn
Female
Age at interview: 67
Number of medicines: 1
Cultural background: British-Australian
Going to hospital and having to remember all her medicines was one of the worst things for Lyn about taking multiple medicines. This has been much easier since she started keeping a medicines list.
I think just the fact that I'm on such strong medication and there are so many of them and every time I go into hospital, which up until quite recently … I think, when we lived on the Sunshine Coast for 15 years, I had 30 hospital stays … every time I went into hospital, they'd ask me how many surgeries I'd had, what medications I was taking, what was wrong with me and it seemed every time you are repeating the same information over and over again and I remember thinking to myself, ‘Oh, I think I'll get my husband to make up a list on the computer, everything that I take and all the things that have been wrong with me so that every time I go and see another doctor, I can take it in in printed form and say, ‘This is it!’ I don't have to remember anymore. So, one of it is just the nuisance of having to go into hospital and having to write it all down …
The Living with multiple medicines project was developed in collaboration with Healthtalk Australia.